Now, 'trans' can compete with 'cis'?

Emilia Pérez (2025)

Director: Jacques Audiard

mvtimes.com/es/2024/10/29/emilia-
perez-film-musical-genre-bender/

This musical offering would not have garnered as much airtime if it had not been for an openly transgender individual who won the Best Actress awards at both the Cannes and the Oscars. Interestingly, a female actor (a cis woman) insists on being referred to strictly as an 'actor', not an 'actress'. They are particularly keen on this, demanding to be addressed as 'actors'. I suppose this does not apply to transgender actors. A quick glance at Karla Sofía Gascón's Wikipedia page states her occupation as an actress. For a transgender person, being addressed as female represents the ultimate victory of her transition. 

It continues to be one of the most nominated films of the year and the most nominated non-English language film in the Academy's history.

When it comes to the basics, this is a gangster film with a twist. The twist is that one can never conceive of a mob film as a musical. What's more, it makes the feared mobster, Manitas, want to leave it all behind to transition into becoming a woman after abandoning his wife and two children. To facilitate this, he hires an aspiring and desperate lawyer, Rita, to arrange all the medical and legal matters for him to disappear. After months of painful gender reassignment surgery and cosmetic procedures in Thailand and Israel, Manitas becomes Emilia Pérez. His wife and children are relocated to Switzerland. Manitas' death is staged.

Four years later, Manitas, now Emilia, must long for her family. She meets the family and introduces herself as Manitas' distant cousin. With the assistance of Rita, the lawyer, they relocate to Mexico City and live as one large, happy family. Trouble arises when Manitas' widowed wife rekindles her romance with an old flame. Emilia also runs a non-profit organisation that seeks justice for individuals killed by gangsters in Mexico.

Interspersed and woven into the story are actors bursting into song, occasionally with quite catchy tunes.

 

It's amusing that we used to laugh at Indian films when actors broke into song and dance back in the day. A 1932 Hindi film, Indersabha, along with its Tamil counterpart, Indrasabha, featured 70 songs. Now, Hollywood musicals are receiving awards—garnering all the nominations for highlighting the LGBTQ agenda, which is currently in vogue, though not so much for their artistic merit.

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A musical horror?

Joker: Folie à Deux (Madness shared by two; 2024)
Director: Todd Philips

No matter how much they suck at anything, adults are not supposed to tell children they are wrong. They are supposed to be encouraged, only showered with positive vibes. It is believed to give them self-confidence and stretch them to greater heights beyond their capacity. 

Nobody is graded. Everyone gets a medal for participating. Everyone is a winner, and he is exceptional and made to believe. 

I have news for you. Go into the world and realise that nobody gives two hoots to you. Everybody is in a hurry. Nobody has time to listen and talk to you. Every man is an island.

To make matters worse, the others have no qualms about stepping on or over you to achieve their goals. Losing you is just one step closer to their goals. There is no time to coach or wait for you. It is a man-eat-man world out there.

Living under the hawking eyes of helicopter parenting or even chip-implanted surveillance, these snowflakes find themselves naked, exposed to the cruel elements of humankind. They once thought everyone was laughing with them all. Much to their disappointment, they realise that they were laughed at. They were not the Joker that everyone loved, but the butt of everyone's joke.

The question is when they will realise that reality and how they will handle it.

After the successful run of Joker in 2019, the filmmakers decided to push their luck. Joker (2109) did well as an evil, dysfunctional character from society's low rung, venting his anger in broad daylight in front of TV cameras. The audience felt for the Joker, and the movie garnered much attention and accolades. Riding on Joker's popularity, the scriptwriters must have taken his fans for clowns (or idiots). They roped in Lady Gaga to pair as Harley Queen, Joker's love interest. We get it that both characters were discontented with their parents and turned out dysfunctional. Both of them blame their respective parents for their predicaments. We get it. 

The shared madness between them and the periodic bursting into songs did not go well with fans. There should be something more concrete than occasional glancing between characters, falling in love, songs and soliloquies. 2/5.

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Beatles always fly!

Yesterday (2019)
Director: Danny Boyle

Growing up in the late 70s and 80s, popular music formed like soundtrack music of our lives. It was always in the background as we, my schoolmates and I, went on living and doing stuff we needed to as we ventured into adulthood. Of course, there was a time and place to listen to music. Technology had not developed for us to enjoy it on the go. Listening to neighbours blaring their cassette player is not counted. 

Then there was the excitement of listening to new songs on the radio and recording them on cassette tapes as the music played. Once a week, the newspapers would display the Top 10 songs and albums in different cities. The slightly affluent ones amongst us would get their fix of the latest songs recorded at record shops for a fee. Of course, it was not legal, but what the heck, we were and still are in a third world country. 

Bee Gees and Saturday Night Fever essentially filled up most of our pubescent lives. Sporadic input came from the Second British Invasion Bands and the New Wave music. The country was excited in 1983 when RTM decided to be liberal by choosing to screen music videos nominated for the MTV awards that year. That was probably when the terrestrial station had the most viewers glued to the idiot box, excluding the live sports telecasts, of course. I remember watching 'Karma Chameleon', 'Sweet Dreams (are made of this)', 'Let's Dance', 'Every breath you take, 'Uptown Girl', 'What a feeling' and 'Maniac' by Michael Sembello. After an initial screening, the moral guardians of the station decreed that the music video of 'Maniac' was too raunchy for public viewing. A lady training in her yoga doing stretching, ballet-like dancing, doing the splits and running in her leotard was X-rated.

The Beatles was not part of our coming of age process, it was for a generation before us, but they did appear in our consciousness after Lennon's assassination in 1980.

Imagine that that one day, you get up and realise that the legendary bands and their music that formed part of your character suddenly get wiped out. What would you do if you are an aspiring musician and all your attempts at getting your first break has all gone down the tubes?

In 'Yesterday', a light British rom-com, Jack Malik, a struggling artist, finds himself in such a predicament after a minor accident following a brief global power outage. Jack realises that in his post-outage alternate reality, 'The Beatles' music does not exist. Neither do other things like Coca Cola, the band Oasis and Harry Potter franchise. Even Google search repeatedly brings him to beetle the bug or Beetle VW!

In his rapacious desire to reach greater heights in his deadpan musical career, Jack presents the Beatles' songs as his. He almost becomes rich and famous when Ed Sheeran introduces him to bigwig producers in the US of A. Jack feels guilty of his plagiarising ways and is about to lose the love of his love when common sense prevails. He won over his girl, gives up his nearly international stardom to be a music teacher and lives happily forever and ever.

This movie is like a treasure trove for diehard Beatles' fans to identify their song lyrics in the dialogue. There are many insider jokes about the Beatles' background here and there. A little knowledge about how a particular song came to be written would help, e.g. the story behind Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane. So when somebody put out a yellow oblong toy, a Beatles fan would quickly know it is not a rubber ducky but a yellow toy submarine! It is an excellent guessing game to which of their song they would include next.

Perusing online, one would notice that this film is not highly rated. Reviewers lamented that the writer did not explore many loose ends associated with the sudden missing of specific icons from the world record. Everybody just accepted it matter-of-factly. Many also felt that the storyline is so predictable, a copy of generic rom-com. Maybe these people were expected a biopic.

There is a reason why it is called rom-com or romantic comedy. And it is an oxymoron. Romance is not about being funny unless one has a warped sense of humour. A wise man once said, "At the end of the day, romance is just a Greek tragedy with plenty of melodrama with a few rings entangled with it, engagement ring, wedding ring and suffer-ring!

(P.S. The proponents of critical race theory and woke culture sympathisers seem ecstatic with the ample representation of the minority group in this picture. The main character is of Indian descent, and his love interest is white!)

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This could be our last song!

Dancer in the Dark (2000)
Director: Lars von Trier

The plot of this film may be all too familiar to followers of Indian cinema. Stories of self-sacrifice, white lies and concealment of the truth to protect the greater truth are all too common. In the western world, this type of pictures would make it to Cannes and earn many accolades! 

There were too many loopholes in the story to be taken seriously, hence the mixed response at its premiere screening; it was booed and clapped simultaneously. Mainly because it was set in the early 60s USA and Björk (the Icelandic smiley superstar) did the music score and the acting, it was given a second lease of life.

Björk acts a Czechoslovakian immigrant, Selma Ježková, a single mother with a preteen son. She works in a factory making sinks and secretly holds a secret tightly to her chest. Selma has a hereditary degenerative eye disease which is slowly making her blind. She realises that it is just a matter of time before she becomes completely blind and gets sacked from her job. She is doing an extra job just to ensure that she saves enough money for her son's eye operation before the disease afflicts him too.

Björk

Selma and her son stay in a rented trailer. The landlord and his wife have a cordial relationship with Selma. Selma is a dreamer, plays music in her head and tries to take part in a musical. The landlord, a police officer, even though outwardly appears self-sufficient, is actually in dire straits because of his spendthrift wife. In desperation, he steals Selma's savings. A confrontation ensues, and the police officer is mortally wounded.

The rest of the movie dwells with Selma in court facing the noose and she being a sacrificial lamb just so that the son can see his grandchildren.

As awkward as it may sound, this seemingly heavy drama is actually a musical! Every now and then, even in the height of suspense, the cast will go into a song-and-dance routine. It is your usual fare of the plight of struggling immigrant in a land of unequal or misplaced justice. Even at the last juncture, (spoiler alert), as she is facing the gallows, the protagonist breaks into a song telling us to sing and be gay as that could be our last song.

Folk music galore

Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Written and Directed by: Joel & Ethan Coen

The Coen brothers are known to have made many quirky movies with plenty of toilet humour which may satisfy the need of most movie buffs. This particular offering seem to stray from their usual fare but ended up as a dark biography of a folk singer.
It takes a certain kind of madness to be able to repeatedly withstand the frequent hard knocks of life and still hold steadfast to your belief that you may indeed change the world one day. Most would follow the path of least resistance and the path frequently travelled on, especially when you next meal is a question mark.
I suppose that is the difference between a socialist state than one that does not compensate for their jobless citizens. In a social state, the country at least takes care of their basic needs whilst the individual can dwell into non-rewarding careers like developing the arts, music and talent. In a country like us, artistes have to kowtow to capitalistic businessmen who will showcase them under their CSR or be lapdogs to conniving politicians who would promise the moon and the stars only until their own interest is fulfilled.
'Inside Llewyn Davies' is the story of a chapter in the life of a struggling folk musician who is putting the pieces of his life together after the loss of singing partner who committed suicide and the poor reception to his music. It is set in 1961 in Greenwich Village, New York.
He gets by playing sporadically at small gigs without little money to go around. He bunks in with acquaintances and friends. The sales of his only record is dismal and the small record label manager that is managing seems not interested in expanding the sales and his career.
Meanwhile, Davies' friend's wife is pregnant by him and he has to sort that out. That is when he discovered that his previous girlfriend did not terminate her pregnancy as they had planned and decided to keep his baby. Than there is a cat of a friend who is stuck with him.
He decided to take a ride to Chicago to see a record label there only to be told that he is not good. Our hero also thinks too highly of himself, refusing to be part of a trio or duo.
He also issues with his father and his sister. In summary, he is a big mess and live does not seem to change for the better. An interesting scene towards the end of the film sees an apparently young unknown Bob Dylan trying a gig at the place he sings, Gaslight Cafe.
The music is quite mesmerising and the story is pretty absorbing. 4/5.

Music, music and more music...

Les Misérables 2012; [pronounced leɪ ˌmɪzəˈrɑːb (Fr)]

Back in the spring of 1995, as I was wandering around the streets of London aimlessly after the clinical examination That is the advantage of having name starting with the first alphabet. You are mostly in the first few names of the exam register, hence you sit for your practical exams first and have to wait the rest to finish theirs!

So, my partner in crime then, LSC, insisted that we should not leave London without watching at one show in the theatres there. Living on a shoestring budget, the only plausible way to purchase their ticket were from a kiosk in Soho selling last minute tickets. Of course, this is before a time when Soho (at least in UK) only meant a strip "SOuth of HOuston (Street)" which was famous for nightlife, theatres and Chinese food! The concept of Small Office Home Office was unheard then! 

To me then, theatres did not excite me. I thought it would like the school dramas that they staged in school. I did not expect it to blow my mind as it did.

Due to unavailability of tickets we ended up watching 'Miss Saigon' instead of  'Les Misérables' or 'Cats'. The highlight of 'Miss Saigon' was the scene of people trying to board a helicopter. The whole theatre hall shook violently as if a helicopter was indeed on stage, with the excellent make believe stroboscopic lights and powerful acoustics to mimic the sound and sight of the rotating rotor blade of a chopper! My impression of the theatres changed forever.

18 years later, I finally got the opportunity to watch Victor Hugo's 'Les Misérables' on film.
Set in the depressing times of 1815 in Paris, two decades after the French revolution where everybody seem restless, poor and unsettled. The state appears like a open sewer and poverty is everywhere. Children are running around aimlessly with nothing to do. Against this backdrop, our hero Valjean (Hugh Jackman) is released from jail after hard labour of 19years for stealing bread to feed his starving child. The years were added on when he unsuccessfully tried to escape incarceration. His jailer, Javert (Russel Crowe) has a personal vendetta against Valjean  (gaol no. 24601) and promise to bring him down.
Even as a free man, he is unable to secure a place to sleep in peace because of his checkered past. He is given shelter and food at a church, but being the thief that he has changed to be, he even steals silverware for the church. He is caught by the police but is given a lease of new life when the pastor denied any wrongdoing on Valjean's part. Valjean repents and changes his wayward ways.
Fast forward... 8years later, 1823...
Valjean jumps parole but made himself successful. He owns a factory and is a mayor of a town. One of his workers, Fontine (Anne Hathaway), is ostracized and sacked for having an illegitimate child. She sells her hair, teeth and finally her body to fend herself and her daughter who is actually treated as a child slave by the paid caretakers. After a dramatic display of emotions, Fontine dies. Even though Hathaway appears for a short segment of the film, she made an impressionable impression on its viewers. (she went on to win many awards).
Valjean goes on to adopt her daughter, Cosette, as he felt bad as Fontine was his employee. The story goes on to explore the complex emotions, turmoils that the characters go through - the relationship between adult Cosette and her adopted father, Cosette and her boyfriend (Marius), Marius and his revolutionary seeking friends and of course the duel between Valjean and Javert who is forever trying to bring him back to jail.
An excellent musical with a complex layered story with rich characters depicting a time in the past.